WHO'S HIGH?

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Owes "Drug-Dealing Dad" A Retraction--and An Apology

On Tuesday, May 7, 17-year-old Trevor Palmer called 911 and turned in his
father, Aaron Palmer, for growing marijuana in his Covington home. That
night, King County deputies arrested Trevor's father and, according to the
charges filed against Palmer, King County Deputy Kasprzyk and his
drug-sniffing dog "Thunder" found 14 pot plants growing in Palmer's house.

On Wednesday, May 8, King County Sheriff's Media Relations Officer Sgt.
Greg Dymerski issued a press release praising Trevor. Sergeant Dymerski's
press release had its intended effect: The mainstream media had a field day
["Dope," Dan Savage, May 16]. "Teen blows whistle on father's drug
dealing," read the May 9 Seattle Post-Intelligencer headline. "A teen weary
of his father's drug dealing out of their Covington house called [the
police], who arrested the man late Tuesday," wrote P-I reporter Hector
Castro. "Once deputies searched [the house], police found between 30 and 40
marijuana plants."

Wait a minute: The King County Sheriff's Office and dog Thunder found 14
pot plants in Palmer's house. But the P-I reported that the police found up
to three times that many--enough pot plants to conclude that Palmer was
dealing drugs, not just growing marijuana for personal use, as he would
claim after his arrest. So where did the damning 30-40 figure come from?

"That's a good question," Sgt. Dymerski told me when I called to ask where
the media got the 30-40 figure. "I really don't know."

It came from a different May 7 report: the incident report filed by King
County Deputy Jesse F. Herrera, which was based on Trevor Palmer's account
and not the cops' search. So, while the media was busily portraying Aaron
Palmer as a drug lord based on the number of plants Trevor said were in the
house, the King County Sheriff's Office knew the number was false.

The P-I fell for Herrera's report. On May 9, the P-I called Aaron Palmer a
drug dealer and reported that Palmer was selling drugs out of his home. "We
relied on info from the police, as we always do when we write about crime
matters," says the P-I's Assistant Metro Editor Kathy George.

However, George wasn't relying on info from the police--the cops found 14
plants, not the inflated number the P-I previously reported. She was
relying on what Trevor told the police.

Rather than clearing up the error in a July 8 interview with Trevor, the
P-I simply allowed him to justify his actions. What's more, the P-I skipped
over an important admission from Trevor, one that would seem to prove Aaron
Palmer was not, as the P-I had claimed, dealing drugs. During his interview
with Trevor, P-I reporter Chris McGann asked him how often people visited
his father's house "about" marijuana. Trevor told McGann that "people
visited the house on account of the marijuana" only twice.

With 14 plants and so few visitors, anyone should know Aaron Palmer wasn't
dealing drugs. Seattle Police Department spokesperson Deanna Nollette told
The Stranger that "a large volume of people coming and going from a house,
staying for short visits at odd hours of the night" is the best sign that
people are dealing drugs out of their home.

McGann knows this too. "If you're dealing drugs out of your house, there's
going to be hundreds of people coming and going," McGann acknowledged when
I interviewed him. He didn't, however, put that analysis in his story. Only
toward the end does McGann mention that just two people visited the house
about the marijuana.

With all these new facts in its possession, the P-I's July 8 follow-up
story should have been a retraction. But it wasn't. "The 'right thing'
tears at a family," read the headline to McGann's piece.

To date, the P-I has not corrected its account. In its pages and on its
website, Aaron Palmer is still the drug-dealing dad, and Trevor Palmer is
still the hero who, in his own words, "saved his sister and brother from
this guy."

Perhaps the real Aaron Palmer story is this: The police knew the number of
pot plants being kicked around in the media was wrong, and yet they did
nothing to correct it. The P-I should be looking into that; or at least
running some sort of correction.

"It's definitely something we'll be looking into," George told me.